Mock Avenue Time RPG

"A one way ticket's in my hand

Heading for the chosen land

My troubles will all turn to sand

When I get to the border"

Richard Thompson, "When I Get To The Border"

"The first thing you gotta know is, this is not your regular guide-book, savvy? You want swank hotels and Cuisine des Fees and ticket prices for ye Olde Unicorne Trolley, go get yourself a Michelin Guid or Let's Go: Borderland. But if you're one of the staggering number of runaway kids who leave their home each year, running from somplace or to somplace, and endingup in this dream-infested town, then read on, boys and girls. We're going to tell you what you need to know to survive on the Big Bad Border.

Who are we? We're the kids who have grown up in Bordertown, as well as the ones who have travelled here from lands on both sides of the Wall; we're the ones you see cruising down Ho Street on Saturday night, dressed to kill and armed to the teeth; we're the ones serving you that beer, playing that guitar, sleeping in that cold doorway; we're the ones who took this abandoned part of the city and made it our home. Copies of A Traveller's Guide to the Edge of Faerie have been passed hand to hand for a generation now on both sides of the Border. It's been changed, expanded, revised, and plagiarized so many times over the years that we can't guarantee that the copy you've found or bought or stolen is the most up-to-date. But we will guarantee that it's 100% Bordertown-made -- where else is there printing this bad? -- and better than that, Soho-made, not just more slick hype from the Borderland Tourist Board. We'll give you the facts, and we'll give them to you straight. Your life might depend on it.

When you get here, green from the World or the Realm, you be careful where you step, you dig? There are kids who will cut you for the wrong word or look, the shape of your ears, the color of your hair. You'll also find kids who will give you their last bite to eat and the shirt off their back. This guide will tell you how to avoid the first, where to find the second, and much more besides. If you make it (and you will, provided you're not a witless fool or a total asshole), before long you'll be an old-timer yourself, or at least have the look and smell of one: new name, new attitude, new life completely diferent from whatever it is that you left behind. Then write your own experience down, update this book and pass it on to some poor greenie who needs it -- along with that shirt off your back."*

Welcome to Mock Avenue Time, kids. This is the world we play in, the world we hope to see you in. Who will you be? Trueblood, human, halfie (if you've read the books)? Street theif, singer, storekeeper, fashion designer? Soho kid or Dragon's Tooth Hill brat? It's all up to you. Who you are, where you go, what things you'll do. There's no agenda here. Just Bordertown, surviving, and -- hopefully -- meeting a few friends along the way. Come and join us!

*Introduction from The Essential Bordertown, edited by Terry Windling and Delia Sherman. The World section also contians excerpts from this particular book (because it's frickin' hard to find and we want you to get a real look at Bordertown through the eyes of it's creators.)